It was a promise of trickle down Bullshit and Trump delivered
“President Trump and Republicans gave huge tax cuts to big drug companies, big oil, and other corporations, but corporations are giving back little—if anything—to working families.”
by
via New Analysis of GOP Tax Scam Shows “Corporate Cheapskates” Not Sharing Windfall With Workers
“We have never had a president, at least in the modern era, whose statements and actions are so at odds with democratic ideals,” she writes in her chapter on the US. “[Donald] Trump has spoken harshly about the institutions and principles that make up the foundation of open government, in the process he has systematically degraded political discourse in the US, shown an astonishing disregard for facts, libelled his predecessor, threatened to lock up political rivals, bullied members of his own administration, referred to mainstream journalists as enemies of the American people, spread falsehoods about the integrity of the US electoral process, touted mindlessly nationalistic economic and trade policies and nurtured a paranoid bigotry toward the followers of one of the world’s foremost religious.”
via Fascism ‘goes unnoticed until it’s too late’: Albright sounds dire warning on Trump
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a plan to revise existing tailpipe standards that were going to apply for model years 2022 to 2025, saying the current standards “are not appropriate” and were set “too high.” Pruitt also said the EPA is re-examining the state of California’s historic ability to adopt tailpipe standards that are more ambitious than the federal government’s.
via How Trump’s Gutting of Tailpipe Standards will make China Auto Leader Worldwide
These days, there’s a significant consensus here that the Iraq invasion was a “terrible mistake,” a “tragic error,” or even the “single worst foreign policy decision in American history.” Fewer voices are saying what it really was: a war crime. In fact, that invasion fell into the very category that led the list of crimes at the Nuremberg tribunal, where high Nazi officials were tried for their actions during World War II. During the negotiations establishing that tribunal and its rules, it was (ironically, in view of later events) the United States that insisted on including the crime of “waging a war of aggression” and on placing it at the head of the list. The U.S. position was that all the rest of Germany’s war crimes sprang from this first “crime against peace.”
via Trump’s Fascination with appointing War Criminals to High Office
International Affairs
Twenty-six years ago the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its military commitments, its oppressive surveillance bureaucracy, and its regime’s loss of legitimacy. That experience has lessons for Trump’s America writes Ian McAuley.
via Donald Trump: Making America Great or Keeping America Poor? – New Matilda
Like many American presidents before him, Donald Trump held court in the East Room of the White House, surrounded by chandeliers, gold curtains, mirrors and portraits of George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt. He had a message for the press: “You know, I read where, ‘Oh, gee, maybe people don’t want to work for Trump.’ Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House … I could take any position in the White House, and I’ll have a choice of the 10 top people having to do with that position. Everybody wants to be there.”
Donald Trump’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn quits
That was around 3.45pm on Tuesday at a press conference. Less than two hours later, the White House that everyone wants to work for was struggling to explain its latest empty desk. Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, had decided to walk away.
Another one bites the dust. There has never been such a rapid turnover of personnel in a US administration in modern times. If anything, the stampede to the exits appears to be accelerating, raising fears of a “brain drain” that will leave key jobs unfilled and make it ever harder to recruit new talent.
via ‘Hollowed out’ White House: Trump is on a dangerous path toward no advisers | US news | The Guardian
Austin, Texas: Deadly poisonings and attacks on Kremlin-linked figures are likely to meet little resistance from the White House, an American defence expert says.
As Cold War-era understandings on permissible spy behaviour unravel, there has been little US pressure to counter Russia’s suspected activities, Georgetown University national security professor Mark Jacobson told Fairfax Media.
“During the Cold War the Soviets were constrained by the threat of a US reaction,” Jacobson said. “Today there is no threat of action by this White House.”
via Where is the White House pressure on Russia over London poisoning?
Steele compiled a dossier containing astonishing allegations against the then presidential candidate, including a claim the Russians had cultivated Mr Trump and traded favours with him for at least five years, and handed him intelligence from the Kremlin on Hillary Clinton and other political rivals.
The Telegraph reported that if the Kremlin believed Skripal helped compile the Trump dossier, it could provide a motive for the assassination attempt in Salisbury.
A former Russian construction magnate told Channel 4 News Skripal was “working in cyber-security and every month going to the [Russian] embassy to meet military intelligence officers”.
The Telegraph said a “hit squad” was dispatched by the Kremlin to assassinate Skripal, to send a message that traitors were not tolerated.
via Poisoned Russian spy linked to Trump dossier author: reports
Why spin the unspinnable? Just leave it out there as it is, Sarah. “The president is speaking for himself” is all that needed to be said.
Some of the biggest names in corporate America are coming under mounting pressure to cut ties with the National Rifle Association as gun safety activists on Friday intensified calls for a boycott in the wake of last week’s Florida high school massacre.
via ‘Bad business’: Apple, Google, Amazon pressured to cut ties with NRA
In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behaviour is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system – a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any US president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.
What Robert Mueller delivered in Friday’s indictment were the first charges for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. He is getting to the heart of the matter.
Robert Mueller charges 13 Russians with interfering in US election to help Trump
Read moreThe special counsel also buried once and for all Donald Trump’s mealy-mouthed obfuscations over whether Russia was responsible for this confidence trick of breathtaking scope and scale. Former CIA director-general Michael Hayden has described it as the political equivalent of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
But what Mueller has not yet produced is compelling evidence that demonstrates the president or his campaign knowingly coordinated with Russians to cheat Hillary Clinton out of the election.
It’s so heartwarming to hear this from the man who promised to end “this American carnage” in his inaugural address. Of course, at the time he was talking about gang murders, just as he did in his State of the Union address last month.
He must have forgotten to mention school shootings with assault weapons, like the AR-15 used at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. It was the same assault weapon used at the Sutherland Springs church in Texas in November. It was the same assault weapon used in the Las Vegas massacre the month before that.
It’s as if no politician could talk about protecting airplane cockpits after 9/11 because all we could was pray and send our condolences.
Trump’s refusal to release the response of the Democratic minority on the House Intelligence Committee to the declassified Nunes memo cherry-picking intelligence reports has been decried as a politicization of intelligence. It has been pointed out by legal scholar Laurence Tribe that Congress could in any case override Trump and declassify the Democratic response itself, if the GOP representatives wanted to. So this controversy isn’t about Trump or Nunes. It is about a Republican Party determined not to play fair.
While these analyses is certainly correct, they miss a crucial problem with our declining democracy in the United States: classified documents are inherently undemocratic and should be rare.
via A Crisis of Democracy: Trump’s block of Dem Response to Nunes
Both Trump and Netanyahu want to secure their rule by attacking liberal, democratic forces. But in order to do so, they need two things: a wall and the promise of eternal war.
via A wall and a war: Two things every fascist regime needs | +972 Magazine
The Game Plan
Nunes and Trump know that Rupert Murdoch’s lying Fox Cable News will be happy to become The Nunes Memo Network 24/7. They know that Sinclair radio stations (which have virtually taken over radio news nationally) will play it up big time. They know that NewsMax and Breitbart and other right wing webzines will beat this drum continually. They know that YouTube celebrities with millions of followers such as Alex Jones will spread the word of the perfidy of the FBI, or the “Kenyan FBI” as they likely will call it.
They already have 36% of voters and just need to create doubts in or support for Trump in 15% of voters who are independents, and they keep winning politically.
Research shows that people with idees fixes don’t change their minds just because they are presented with factual information that challenges them. In fact, they dig in. Thus, by the time the minority Democratic report comes out, many Republicans will be so wedded to the Nunes narrative that it will be very difficult to dislodge their certainty.
This photo alone shows the power of the media to misinform.
President Trump during the 2018 State of the Union address. (D. Myles Cullen / White House)
The whole thing is kind of silly.
That’s kind of how the State of the Union speech is. What’s the point anymore? These annual pomp-and-circumstance State of the Union speeches are only about 100 years old. Before that, the updates were simply written.
Our entertainment devices have changed. Now, we have the internet, we have news websites, we have 24-hour news stations galore.
Not to mention Twitter.
Do we really need a president to give, in a formal annual speech, his self-interested perspective of what’s going on?
Of course, presidents—no matter who—are going to say that they are the greatest thing since McRib sandwiches.
via Bad News for Trump Haters: He’s Turning Into a Politician
Now, with Bannon out, we enter the uncharted waters of having a president whose chief strategist is the television. No staff member has replaced Bannon; the new power behind the throne is Fox & Friends.
via The Power Behind the Throne Is ‘Fox & Friends’ | The Nation
Trump has threatened to ‘open-up’ U.S. libel laws, sue news outlets, and subject their broadcast licenses to review. He regularly attacks outlets and individual journalists on Twitter and in speeches, calling them “sad,” “failing,” or “garbage.” Since declaring his presidential candidacy in 2015, Trump has posted about 1,000 tweets critical of the press. CPJ research shows that when public figures and political leaders lob insults at the media, they encourage self-censorship and expose journalists to unnecessary risk.
Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, it still doesn’t follow that he’s stupid.
There’s another form of intelligence, called “emotional intelligence.”
“This is a historic event that we have been waiting for,” an extremist member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party said.
The latest radical move by hardline Zionists in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party could see Israel´s government annex all of the occupied West Bank, incorporating most of historic Palestine into the Israeli state.
The central committee of the right-wing party overwhelmingly voted on Sunday for a resolution urging Likud parliamentarians to push for the annexation of the territories that are already illegally-held.
“If the president of the United States believes Jerusalem is ours, there is no reason why a right-wing party and coalition cannot. It’s important for us to show Trump what the ruling party in Israel wants, and since he loves the Jewish people, sooner or later, he will come to the same conclusion,” the activist added.
via Israeli Ruling Party Votes to Annex West Bank and Seize Last Palestinian Lands | Informed Comment
So here are the top drawbacks for the Northeast of climate change, which rather cast into the shade a mere cold snap or two.
via No, Trump, you don’t want more Climate change for Northeast
US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
But the internet service providers– corporations such as Verizon and Comcast, were deeply unhappy about the neutrality, the liberty of the internet. They would like to charge MSNBC millions of dollars a year to deliver their news site to the public. What they have in mind is to create lanes on the internet– fast lanes and slow lanes.
It has been demonstrated that if a web site takes a little longer than usual to download, readers simply close the page and go on to another site. So the sites slotted into the slow lane over time will lose all their readers.
And you get slotted in the slow lane because you cannot pay the millions for delivery of your site that MSNBC or Fox can.
In other words, fast lanes and slow lanes wipe out the diversity of the internet and deliver it into the hands of a few billionaires and of governments such as the Russian Federation, who can pay for a fast lane.
It would be as though all highways in the US cost $1,000 to get on each day, and if you couldn’t pay that, you’d have to use surface roads, service roads and dirt roads to get where you are going. Billionaires could get on the highway because for a billionaire $1000 is chump change.
via FCC begins restoring Corporate Privilege to the Internet | Informed Comment
“Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Chuck Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump,” the president tweeted.
“What we have experienced in South Africa is a fraction of what the Palestinians are experiencing,” Mandela told Royal News English. “We were oppressed in order to serve the white minority. The Palestinians are being eliminated off their land and brought out of their territories, and this is a total human rights violation. I think it is a total disgrace that the world is able to sit back while such atrocities are being carried out by apartheid Israel.”
Israel and US Hide Names of Companies Supporting Israeli Settlements
“I don’t think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security. Society can’t function without shared prosperity.”
Instead America is led by a man Stiglitz says should not be in the White House. “He is not fit to be president. He does not have an understanding of the issues, the political process. He is used to making one-time deals. You can cheat your contractors when you buy a real estate property and fix it up. Reputation doesn’t matter. For the president of the United States reputation does matter. The reputation of the United States does matter. We are dealing with countries all over the world. They want to know if your word is good. Trump’s word is not good.”
Joseph Stiglitz: ‘Trump has fascist tendencies’ | Business | The Guardian
“There is nothing going on in Washington involving someone named Paul Manafort if that’s even a real name.”
Source: Stephen Colbert Mocks Fox ‘News’ For Not Covering Mueller Investigation | Crooks and Liars
The White House on Friday confirmed its official stance on the women accusing President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct: They are lying.
Source: White House: All The Women Who Say Trump Sexually Harassed Them Are Liars | HuffPost
The Watchers | – – According to latest figures, the death toll in Puerto Rico caused by the passage of …
Source: As Trump disses Puerto Rico Again, 83% in dark, 36% Drinking Dirty Water | Informed Comment
Up Military Spending and cut Budget, & you’ll get a wasteland
Source: Superstorm Donald Hits GOP, aims to Ravage US | Informed Comment
Trump promised to drain the swamp. . . now he is surrounding himself with starving alligators expecting welfare
Source: Dear Trump voter – Salon.com
It’s officially on. Breitbart News, with former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon back in charge, is ripping mad at US President Donald Trump after Monday’s Afghanistan speech foreshadowed an increase in ground troops.
Source: With Bannon back in charge, Breitbart unleashes fury at Trump for Afghanistan speech
The Australian media and political landscape is now awash with goons seeking to exploit the sort of far-right tone the Donald Trump presidency has helped legitimise across the West, all of them dedicated to the defence of free speech and the hurt feelings of white men.
Source: Behind Pauline Hanson’s burqa stunt is an ugly reality
